I am assuming Talon scouts the next room. Let me know if you are staying in the room, as it is quite easy to secure with the key and a narrow five foot entrance.
So is it okay with everyone (especially GM Tribute) if we rest here for 24 hours while I complete my ritual? And I was thinking of doing this in the room with the upside-down chest, not the next one.
I would rather have your pet by my side then not. 24 hours of rest in a secure room seems like a good plan.
Ok by me.
No problem.
Good plan.
We need to come up with some sort of plan as to exploring. do you guys want Talon to be a scout? if so, to what extent of scouting?
should he just spot the up comming rooms then let you guys rush in and search away? should he enter first? we seem a bit disorganized from my perspective.
I think we would all stay together (DON'T SPLIT THE PARTY!). I believe it was GM Tribute who moved us down the corridor. I don't think anyone had stated that we as a group were ready to go. Can we just retro that and say we never opened the door that lead out of the "chest" room? Or if we did that we just peaked down the corridor and decided to hole up there until I finished my ritual?
To keep the pace going, I had Talon peek ahead into the next room the safety of the dark five foot wide passage and report back.
That unlocked the 'flavor text' for the room.
Then I asked if you were going to hunker down in the chest on the ceiling room as it was the last plan discussed.
sorry if I sounded harsh, not my intent, I just wnat to discuss plans going forward so we can have a basic M.O. for exploring. Helps the GM a bit in case someone isn't available or something, he already knows generally what the basic plan is ahead of time.
Also once I know more of Talon's role, I can better customize his future levels (if we get any) toward that goal.
I would prefer Talon to scout ahead, but stay within sight so that we can react to any problems quickly.
With my 'perfect knowledge' that there would be no problems in this case -- I had this happen to keep the pace going.
It happens. Face to face this would have taken less than a minute. Talon is right to set up a s.o.p. for scouting since that will save us some time in the long run.
Busy with my wife's birthday Easter and running second part of "Rasputin must die" this weekend, posting may be spotty. Should be back to normal Tuesday.
Cheers
Sounds like we're leaning toward an SOP of Talon scouting one room forward, then coming back so we can discuss or if he gets spotted, we're close enough to get to him quickly.
We need to set a three watch rotation I will place in campaign tab as default. Happy Easter all.
William will take second watch.
Vardlon would prefer first or third, so as to have better uninterrupted sleep. (Wait, do elves sleep in Greyhawk? I can't remember.)
Sandrion volunteers for first watch.
Skirros is happy to take any shift.
Throw Bikmalu on 3rd shift.
Talon can take any shift since he is not a spell caster whatever ends up open consider talon is going to fill it
This was a golden time to use entangle!
I'm out of town for the weekend with limited connectivity. Please feel free to DMPC if needed.
Back from Shaky Knees in Atlanta.
The Replacements, The National, Modest Mouse and Alabama Shakes with over 29 other bands--what a show.
The cliché swinging rope bridge is always great fun. Horrible perception and initiative rolls didn't help there.
I would agree except I'm one of the swingers!
Starting to post on the weekend and been interrupted twice already.
Things get very hard when allowing the BBEG to locate you and move to the caves. This module was considered quite hard at the time of its release.
If the bridge fell, the damage was supposed to be 20d6 no save. But, speaking to other DMs, a way to allow it to swing and a saving throw to hold on was the recommended solution rather than instant death.
Yeah I am not surprised by this turn of events at all. If we had any sort of sense we should have retreated out of the caves and tried again later.
Oh well...now where did I put my 4d6 dice...
I remember this as the beginning of the 'time sensitive' put a clock on the party adventures. In the tournament version, I don't think resting was allowed. The previous tournament adventure, C1, made the party slowly poisoned and required to escape by a certain time to avoid death.
During the tournament, less than half the groups even made it through 'the gauntlet'. With better visibility, I remember webbing the tasloi throwing the boulders out of the upper cave to save the bridge and our druid casting entangle in the vines as you did. Everyone hated the crocodiles which were just plain vicious against plywood canoes. At the time, standard dungeon protocol when faced with water was to chum the waters with the freshest food. Throwing standard rations into the water revealed the crocodiles, which we attacked before getting into the canoes.
This one, when I first went through the full module later as a player imposed the ability of the bad guy to scry you and come after you if you delayed. Although not an instant death, it was much better to surprise a wizard after leveling and hiding in the city than have a prepared wizard stalk you in a narrow chokepoint after casting guards and wards in his domain. The fog definitely makes the bridge much harder.
The reverse gravity trap with the sawed through pegs was cool but only a minor nuisance for an experienced rogue.
DMT, if we hadn't crossed the bridge then we would have struggled to continue. Visibility was the main problem. But with guards and wards, it was a near perfect ambush site. Guards and wards at our level is a nightmare.
I like the dangling ropes etc. As for the rest, I think it is important that the two most effective PCs were the Druid4 and the Ftr4. Multiclassing may have been a small mistake on our part.
Cheers
I like the dangling ropes etc. As for the rest, I think it is important that the two most effective PCs were the Druid4 and the Ftr4. Multiclassing may have been a small mistake on our part.
I don't know how much difference that would have made. The druid had mobility (didn't have to be on the bridge) and the fighter had staying power (hit points). If I would have played a 4th-level wizard, I doubt I would have been any more effective.
We're up against an at-least-7th level caster, with guard lizards, with boulders being dropped on us, with two environmental hindrances (rope bridge and fog). We're way out of our 4th-to-5th-level pay grade.
We can continue in the Forbidden City proper with the 'freed by an opposing enemy of the wizard and the escaping druid in bird form' or we can continue with the same characters through another classic adventure. The freed with many items missing old school flavor I have found turns the stomachs of those of the new school who feel their stuff is an essential part of their character.
A prepared wizard jumping into an existing encounter is definitely harder than cornering him in his lair.
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I'm not that keen on continuing, I'm afraid. Maybe my memory of the old school is rose tinted but the last encounter was not so much fun for me. More like a bad situation that got worse and worse until it started to claim lives. Plus I dislike "coming back from the dead" or captures when someone has been trying to kill us. If fact, any kind of return even from the raising dead spells are something I never use.
You put loads of effort in DM Tribute and there are plenty of players on the boards who I'm sure would be better suited to the challenges you present.
Under the circumstances, let's just say that Milhar died trying to reach Skirros, his cousin.
Thanks for the chance to play in your game. Please do not take this as a criticism, its more about the way I enjoy playing.
Regards
Andy
Thanks-- for those you who wanted the rundown of the last two encounters in the tournament gauntlet for completeness and to understand how tough it was.
Next encounter was with two 8HD yuan ti and 9HD yuan ti who polymorphs into an abomination and cast darkness, suggestion, and cause fear. Obviously the darkness doesn't affect them.
Pretty nasty.
The last one is a giant constrictor snake and two more drop on you as you attack him.
It appears David Cook, the author if this module, didn't know what CR balanced encounters were.
Back in 1st edition days, the modules were written for parties of 6-8 PCs of levels 4-7. I think if we had that many players of a mix of those levels, we could have managed, but we just didn't have the hp for it. Skirros' death was not helped by the fact that I intentionally created her as very, very unoptimized in order to make her more like a 1st ed bard.
Yeah let me chime in here for a moment.
Player death in 1E was a common occurrence due to the reasons GM Tribute mentioned. Fortunately it only took about 15 minutes to whip up a replacement character. I also remember many parties with henchmen and hirelings to help with these tough encounters.
Skirros, nothing wrong with un-optimized builds. Back in the day before point buys, such builds were quite common.
I think this goes to show the changes between the old school dungeoneering and the 3.5/PF gamin philosophy. Not drawing any judgments here, just pointing out the fact.
I think I still have this module stashed away somewhere, but when it first came out I was so impressed with it. It was a cool premise with an awesome location. I miss those days.
so what do we do now?